active scanning for sensations

, modified 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 8:00 AM
Created 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 7:47 AM

active scanning for sensations

Posts: 13 Join Date: 8/3/10 Recent Posts
hello there...

i have another newbie type question that hopefully some people have ideas on....

im relatively new to the world of insight mediation.. im fairly clued up in terms of reading ect but just beginning to meditate properly...

During my initial attempts meditating it felt like in some way, although still full of confusions and questions, that in some way i was on track... ie i found that there was a multitude of sensations, more than i had ever realised and my attention could move around them pretty fast and note them...(it felt instictive to just do the beep beep beep kind of fast noting rather than giving a name to everything)

but in these initial weeks lacking confidence about doing it 'right' i have a couple of questions...

i have been following the breath and noticing the rising, rising, ect ect as the foundation of the practice as advised..
at times i found i kind of wanted to kind of scan my body for all the sensations i could, like direct the attention to my hands, feet, ear, ect and would find that i could kind of find sensations everywhere, then i would note them, i found i could do this pretty fast.. but to get a feeling of flow and speed it was very much a concious direction of attention

so i would like to ask if it best to stay more solidly on the breath and note other things 'as they arise' (as if they are a temporary and spontanious interuption to the focus on the breath practice, or whether it is quite normal to 'go after' sensations and kind of whizz the attention around the body, as a side addition to the breath..

when i was doing the kind of scanning it felt productive, but i also felt like i could have been doing it wrong in forcing it too much....

it felt like a certain amount of concious force was part of the game.. also it felt like i was 'zapping' sensations and thoughts...like with a mental laser, and that the zapping was, and awareness of the zapping, the noting... i didnt really feel like i need to say 'planning' or 'itch' whatever, it didnt feel intuitive.. it felt like it was all in the zap process...

any thoughts on this would be much appreciated as i get myself up and running and adjust as neccessary

Matt
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Bruno Loff, modified 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 10:01 AM
Created 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 9:57 AM

RE: active scanning for sensations (Answer)

Posts: 1094 Join Date: 8/30/09 Recent Posts
Mathew,

There are different ways of doing vipassana; one of them is rooting on the breath until a strong sensation intrudes and then pay attention to that and go back to the breath; another is to scan the body methodically up and down, head to feet, trying to get sensations to flicker everywhere; another approach is to just take whatever is manifesting most strongly and note that; finally, you can do vipassana just by paying attention to specific points in the body (such as chakras).

In my somewhat limited experience of insight meditation (one-and-a-half years), whatever is best at a certain moment will change depending on where one is, and where one wants to go. But, furthermore, I found that the sensation of "being productive" was mostly accurate; progress is usually felt as such (at least it worked to get stream-entry). The only exception to this rule is the A&P stage, during which the amount of pleasurable delusion can overcome good judgement (basically, if you are feeling tons of pleasure, and find yourself screaming in your mind "oh yeah! this is it! I got it!" without having given "it" a good amount of time to see if "it" holds, then it is just A&P and it will go away regardless of how "right" it feels). Also sometimes during dark night what might seem like a setback turns out to be good progress.

One good tip is that if you are going through dark night, then noting practice is very helpful in not letting one be sweeped away in the drama.

But there are much more experienced meditators here who can probably say interesting things on how to judge the adequacy of different practices.

Bruno
, modified 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 11:52 AM
Created 13 Years ago at 8/3/10 11:52 AM

RE: active scanning for sensations

Posts: 13 Join Date: 8/3/10 Recent Posts
hey bruno,

well its good to know the scan is a way to go about things, its very hard at first with no reference point to really know whats going on..

as it feels pretty intuitive it seems good for now to do the scan as a side meditation to following the breath and see how things develop, as a starter im content im somewhere in the right ball park

thanks!